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Consultant to address entrepreneurial media models

October 20, 2009

Consultant to address entrepreneurial media models

An internationally respected media expert and entrepreneur will share his experience and insights with Penn State students and the public during a two-day visit to the University Park campus in early November.

David Mathison will present a free lecture titled "Be The Media: Entrepreneurial Media Models, Activism and Policy" at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, in Foster Auditorium of Pattee Library. In addition, he will visit classes on media activism and media ethics while on campus.

Mathison is a media consultant, author, publisher, speaker and high-tech entrepreneur with more than 20 years experience in content distribution and management.

His book, "Be the Media," is an extension of Mathison's award-winning work in eliminating inefficiencies in publishing, providing all participants with more egalitarian, democratic and open systems.

His visit is being coordinated by the Don Davis Program for Ethical Leadership, housed in the College of Communications.

"Dave's visit adds to his recent contribution of 150 copies of 'Be the Media' for use by our students and faculty in both conceptual and practical courses," said Amit Schejter, an associate professor of communications in the Department of Telecommunications. "I hope Dave's visit will help motivate the many amongst us who wish to use media to further community engagement and democratic discourse."

Since 2001, Mathison has been chairman and CEO of the Natural E Creative Group, a diversified media company with properties in print, broadcast, interactive and licensed goods. From 1999-2001, Mathison was CEO and co-founder of the Kinecta Corp., creator of Interact, a leading-edge platform for content syndication.

Some of the world's largest publishers used Interact to directly connect with their audiences. Customers included trusted global companies such as AOL, Fidelity Investments, the Financial Times, MSNBC, Reuters and others.

From 1994 to 1999, Mathison was a vice president with Reuters, where he led the development of innovative syndication technology that delivered Reuters' financial data, stock quotes, headlines, audio, video and multimedia news to customers over the Internet. His legacy provides millions of people with free news, financial data, audio and video information on the Web's most popular sites.

Articles on Mathison have appeared on CNN.com, in the Financial Times, the Harvard Business Review, MacWorld, The New York Times and many more. Internationally, he has appeared at UK Online, the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Cairo Book Fair and he made presentations entirely in Spanish to librarians throughout Central and South America.

Because of its efforts to encourage a direct relationship between customers and media producers, "Be the Media" is available exclusively at BeTheMedia.com online.